After undocking from the International Space Station on June twenty ninth, SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon capsule splashed down off of the coast of Jacksonville, Florida on June thirtieth at -10:30 am ET (14:30 UTC).
On June 4th, the CRS-28 mission lifted off from Launch Complex 39A atop Falcon 9 B1077 and spent 23 days docked to the International Space Station. This was the eighth mission under Phase 2 of the industrial resupply contract with NASA.
Separation confirmed.@SpaceX‘s uncrewed Dragon spacecraft undocked from the @Space_Station at 12:30pm ET. #CRS28 will now start its journey home, splashing down off the coast of Florida around 10:30am ET (1430 UTC) on Friday. Follow https://t.co/FRrjhINIvY for the newest. pic.twitter.com/L95XvRhKOX
— NASA (@NASA) June 29, 2023
During this resupply mission, the Cargo Dragon brought tons of supplies for the crew, experiments, and hardware for the station. This included a pair of IROSAs (International Space Station Roll Out Solar Arrays) that may provide increased power for the orbiting outpost. Following splashdown and recovery, time-sensitive experiments were picked up via helicopter and flown back to Kennedy Space Center.
The Cargo Dragon that accomplished this mission was C208, the primary Dragon 2 cargo variant, which has now made 4 trips to ISS and has spent -132 days in space since debuting on the CRS-21 mission in December 2020.
A major note of the Phase 2 contract awarded by NASA, it also included Northrop Grumman Cygnus and Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser spaceplane. Cygnus has only one launch left on the Antares 230+ as a result of it using Russian-made engines and the U.S. Government requiring the engines to be U.S. made. Because of this, Northrop Grumman contracted SpaceX to launch the subsequent 3 Cynus vehicles while they’ve engines built for his or her Antares 330 rocket, these engines shall be built by Firefly Aerospace.
Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chase, however, is as a result of debut on the 2nd flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, which is now indefinitely delayed while they reinforce the Centaur V upper stage following an anomaly earlier this 12 months. This most probably pushes the flight well into 2024.
With these issues, that essentially makes SpaceX the one U.S. company sending supplies and astronauts to ISS and it’s clear just a few other corporations have to play catch up.